By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Most of you know I have spent a good portion of my life training animals of various kinds dogs for obedience and to work livestock, horses, donkeys and cattle (oxen).
When we train animals, we “condition” them to do X and they receive Y reward. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, conditioned dogs to expect to be fed by ringing a bell every time they got fed. Eventually when a bell was rung, even though there was no food in sight, the animals expected to be fed, and their bodies reacted by making them “slobber” at the mouth, just as they would if food were present.
B.F. Skinner, and American psychologist, observed that animals who had intermittent rewards, rather than continual rewards, would continue a behavior longer than animals who got rewarded every time they did an act. For example, a rat that pushed a lever and got a grain of food every time, would quickly stop pushing it if the food didn’t com. But a rat that sometimes got a food pellet when he pushed the lever would continue to pound on the lever for a very long time, or even never stop pushing it, even though he did not get a food pellet.
In humans, this “intermittent” rewards works in a slot machine, or in gambling games, because every once in a while you get rewarded. Therefore, you keep hoping that next time will be THE TIME.
Psychopaths and intermittent rewards
You may ask what this training technique has to do with psychopaths. Well, just as Las Vegas was built on intermittent rewards for gamblers, relationships with psychopaths are built on the intermittent rewards they give us.
At the first part of the relationship, the psychopath “love bombs” us by giving us the good things we enjoy compliments, doing things for us, great sex. WOW! We think we have found nirvana. Just as a dog I am beginning to train gets a treat every time he “sits,” then only sometimes when he “sits,” the psychopath only gives us the “loving” some of the time. Also, just as I eventually no longer give the dog a food treat any time he “sits,” and the most he will get is a “good dog” verbal compliment, or a scolding if he doesn’t sit fast enough, the psychopath quits giving us treats and gives us “scoldings.”
We have been conditioned by the psychopath to be and do what they want, because we still desire that initial “love bombing,” and we dread the “scolding” they will give us if we don’t “jump” when they say “frog.” We keep on hoping against hope that we will be able to please them again. We do whatever we can to keep the scoldings to a minimum and get them to reward us with “love” again.
Running for bread
It doesn’t make any kind of difference if the animal we are training is a dog, a parrot, a donkey, an steer, a horse ”¦ the conditioning works the same. Intermittent rewards cause the desired behavior to continue. If we give continual rewards every time they perform the behavior, it wouldn’t take long for the behavior to be extinguished when we stopped rewarding it.
My mammoth jack donkeys, Fat Ass and Hairy Ass, haven’t had a piece of bread (their preferred treat) in a year or more. But any time I go to the hangar and open the freezer, they come running up to the fence on the never dying hope that I will get bread out of the freezer and give them a piece. They are totally “conditioned” to that treat, and they know that the opening and closing of the freezer is what always preceded them getting a slice of bread.
The psychopath we have had relationships with know what “rings our chimes,” what makes us happy and what makes us sad, or what makes us angry. It is like a panel of buttons on the front of our chest. They know just the exact words to say, or the thing to do, that will press our “buttons” and get the reaction they want from us.
No Contact is the answer
No Contact keeps those buttons covered. That is why it works.
Psychopaths know that in the past, if they pressed “button A,” you would do B. So they will keep on trying because IT ALWAYS WORKED IN THE PAST. They just know if they keep doing it, it will EVENTUALLY work again. So they will press it harder and faster and longer. Just like some old lady sitting at a slot machine, plugging in quarters, she just “knows” that the very next quarter will get her a reward. Just like my donkeys running up to the fence when I open the freezer, they still hope to get a slice of bread, a reward.
Expect when you go No Contact that the psychopath will up the ante and will work harder and longer to get a reaction. If it takes 30 times for them to eventually get a reaction, THEY LEARN THAT it takes 30 TIMES TO GET A REACTION. If next time it takes 40 times, they learn that they must work a bit harder to get a reaction, so they keep on and on and never stop.
So hang in there. Once you make up your mind to go NO CONTACT, then STAY no contact, because if you give them ANY reward of ANY kind, even a well deserved “cussing,” it is still a reward. It is ATTENTION, and even negative attention is attention. Not being noticed at all is the worst punishment they can have.
If you are required by law to have contact with them, like if you share children, do it only by e-mail, so that you have a record of it. Discuss ONLY the children. Do not respond to any nasty comments they make. Refuse to discuss the other person with your children, and Gray Rock them entirely. NO emotional responses at all. If possible, get someone else to pick up and drop off the kids, so you do not have to see him/her. Or do it in a public place, a police department parking lot if necessary.
We can stop them only by not responding. So when your ex is trying to push your buttons, just think about Joyce’s donkeys Fat Ass and Hairy Ass running up to the fence for a slice of bread. Visualize your psychopath with long ears, standing there trying to get a reaction from you, and then DON’T GIVE IT. Take control and refuse to allow the psychopath to make you respond to his/her button pushing!
God bless.
Hi Darwinsmom,
my condolences on having to teach teenagers! They are, almost by nature, spathy. It’s the age when they’re testing their power and need to rail against authority.
Girard says that people, even former enemies, can bond if they have a common enemy. A scapegoat.
What I’ve determined is that some people can ONLY bond over a scapegoat. That’s why politicians scapegoat others so much, they are trying to bond with the voters.
In this case, your teenagers are scapegoating you. Even the catholic girl began to copy the witches, just so she could bond with her peers.
When you’re dealing with spaths, you have to use spath tools, not empath tools. You have to find another scapegoat. Make it one of the three witches.
If you punish the entire class by giving extra work every time one of the three witches acts up, pretty soon the whole class will hate them.
By the same token, you can take away extra work from the whole class, when someone behaves well (not sure what type of behavior exactly).
I think this will work because teens are so eager to earn the respect of their peers, but not their teacher. They are especially mimetic during that age and they will copy each other more than anyone else.
We’re not allowed to “punish” everyone for what one does.
But you could say the whole class is now getting the effect of their behaviour. I changed everything around so that they are now isolated on their witch island, and everybody else is working too concentrated to notice them much. I hardly notice them, certainly not emotional anymore. I intend to set up other ways too so that basically those who work get benefits, those who don’t flunk. I was amazed how fast the others actually were with some of the work. So, I intend to step up the volume.
((((Darsmom))))) And to think I wanted to teach……
How about a little humor? This is why donkeys don’t go to school. Nobody likes a smart-ass.
Kimmie, you are tooooo much! LOL
Darwin’smom, My condolences…sounds like you did a good job though and outsmarted those witches….and I think there are one or two in every class.
Yup, Oxy, there are some in every class… but they rarely are a team of 3 like those 3.
I once witnessed one girl trying to apologize to the harsh one for something. The cold one was absolutely letting the other beg and try, while she remained totally cold and distant, saying “I didn’t start it.” I intervened by ordering the girl to go back to her seat immediately and do my exercises. While it seemed as if I was harsh and non-understanding to the begging girl, I know I did her a favour by cutting into her emotional and frightened plea with the other. It’s this incident that made me think of the harsh one as the harsh one. She was completely ignoring the other girl and clearly felt all powerful. To me she repeated, “I didn’t start this”, to which I said, “I don’t care who started what, as long as it stops right here and now.”
A few minutes later I saw the second one do a slice-throat hand signal to miss crocodile. They were seated separately at the time. I used to try and solve their noise that way – by setting miss crocodile far away from the role-hopper. But they keep hand signaling each other and walk off “to get an eraser” and such things. Miss role hopper did not signal the slice-throat to miss crocodile as a threat to miss crocodile, but as a threat about the girl who had angered miss harhsly. When I confronted her about it, she tried to weasle out of that… I repeated “I’m not having it in my classroom – it stops now.” I reported this to the principal though, because it looks like pestering and terrorizin the others in their class to me.
It’s clear they feel as if they have the social power over class, and yet… they are the most asocial. I’ve rarely seen a threesome coordinate such power in their class. There are always one or two, but even then not this openly.
They’re not as much liked imo as they are feared. That’s why the scapegoating would not help in this case imo. It is better to create a situation where the others can see that the witches are broomless. Nobody else is complaining about the teaching method I used the past weeks, except them. Actually, most were eagerly cooperative… even some boys who tend to be lazy, chatty and otherwise trying to do somethign else. I’ve noticed that most are distancing themselves now of the 3 and completely ignoring them… and are very compliant and obliging to me. I am more relaxed, they are relaxed, they get attention, get good grades and the 3 witches are rendered powerless. Basically the whole class – except for the 3 witches and teacher’s daughter with her gf – is eagerly and willingly cooperating with me, from the first time I installed this method. It even surprised me a bit how easy, smoothly and eagerly they switched. There can only be one reason for it: because they like it more to be in a situation where they can forget the existence of the three witches.
The teacher’s daughter will start to dig her own grave soon. She had some credibility with me before, but she lost it… if she starts to act up again, I will tell her that her actions and words made her lose any trust in her, and that as far as I am concerned the onus is solely on her to earn it. She thinks that because she is a hard-working pupil otherwise she gets to have the benefit of the doubt and get away with behaviour that’s not ok. The two are separate things – and she’ll get presented the result of it.
Darwinsmom
I want to commend you for your insight and wisdom in managing these three weird sisters. We need you in our schools where teachers pander to the “victims”, those who were disruptive and destroyed the ability for others to obtain an education. “Victims” b/c it is assumed the reason they behave that way MUST be environmental.
My daughter had one of those social worker type teachers who told the class they didn’t need to share with their parents, they were to share with her, and that all they needed to do was Try to do their work, there was no standard or expection that they master their assignments b/c that was unfair to those who struggled, so to not make the underperformers feel bad, the standard of “Trying” was set (how’s that for a run on sentence! will not edit this time). My daughter’s grade in that teacher’s class plumeted, she barely passed that year.
The next year was high school and my daughter reported that her first hour teacher told the class that if they had crappy parents or crappy home life, the counselor was down the hall and they would help them but that in her class they were expected to follow her rules, do their assignments, and master their subject, that she was available off hours for any assistance needed in the subject only. What a difference it made for my kid! Her grade and her testing was so high that she was put on the accelerated track and ended high school a year early with two years college credit and got into the top engineering university in the USA.
I SO respect that you are similar to my daughter’s high school teacher. Wish teachers like you were the norm in our schools here.
Katy
Darwin’smom, you sound to me like you are an excellent teacher and have control of your classroom. Good for you!!!! TOWANDA!!! You are using some of the methods you have learned here on LF and I think you deserve a big TOWANDA!!!!!
darwinsmom:
I commend and admire you for your teaching skills. It’s a gift that is for sure to be able to control a classroom with hooligans trying to make trouble. I don’t think I could do it so congrats to you! Keep up the good work even though I know it’s hard.
Tea Light:
Thanks. By 8AM I was tired so I did fall asleep for awhile. Take care. x
Darwinsmom,
I get it now. You took away all the attention they were getting. That’s way better than scapegoating them, because scapegoating would still have given them power. Now the only person that CAN give them attention is you, and only if they want to learn. KUDOS on a job well done!
It’s almost the same thing you did with the boy who was acting up. You refused to give him any negative attention and only gave him positive attention without emotions, when he behaved.
I’m really impressed by your ability to implement solutions to the various situations that your students present to you. It’s like you’re an ingenious military commander. DIVIDE AND CONQUER!!!